Hydrogels have found numerous applications in medical technology, for examples in implants or as drug delivery devices. A drawback with conventional hydrogels, such as polyHEMA (hydroxyethylmethacrylate), is their brittleness due to their low tensile strength in swollen state, which is about 0.5 MPa. This characteristic is especially problematic during surgical intervention when an implant made from a hydrogel material shall be inserted into the body often with complex manipulations, as is the case when a hydrogel intraocular lens (IOL) shall be positioned in the capsular bag of the eye through a small incision. Another drawback for the application of conventional hydrogels as medical implants is their high elasticity modulus. In the technique of replacing the natural lens of the eye with a hydrogel IOL, their high modulus prevents the implant from being accommodatable under the influence of the compressing and relaxing forces exerted by the ciliary muscles. It is also prerequisite in an ophthalmic application that the refractive index should be sufficiently high. This implies that the swollen network should contain a sufficient amount of water.
Obviously there is a demand for new hydrogel materials that can overcome the mentioned disadvantages.
It is the object of the present invention to provide for hydrogels, which at a high water content have suitably high tensile strength and sufficiently low elasticity modulus to improve their usefulness as medical implants.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide for a method of preparing such hydrogels.